Hot Day at the Easel

The weather in New York has been really hot. It's not that unusual, in fact if it's going to be hot here it better be hot in July. I don't want to hear anything from the people who like the cold weather. If anyone complains about the heat I remind them that if they wait we will have snow soon enough. And it would be too soon for me. Guaranteed.

With my babysitting over, and the heat outside reaching the real feel temperature of 110F, I planned on staying in with the air conditioning on and painting. Since I've been pushing myself to work from photographs lately, I looked through some of the latest and decided to keep going with the sunflowers.

Twenty minutes at a time was my plan. I thought I would work on this for the allotted time and stop. I sketched in the composition and went in with paint as you can see here.

Another twenty minutes later and I'm at this not quite done stage. I tried to walk away from painting rather than look at it with a critical eye. I see way too much in photos so this is hard work for me.

Sunflowers on the Table (c)2011 Dora Sislian Themelis
12x16 Watercolor on Lanaquarelle paper

This is the finished painting. I have thoughts on this that I will not air out loud. I will leave the critique to you readers. Sometimes I think I should stop painting all together at the first twenty minutes, but that's just my opinion.